Guest: Frank Putnam

Frank W. Putnam is a professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. When Dr. Putnam studied patients with MPD/DID at the National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Research Program in Bethesda, MD, he noticed large numbers of his adult patients had been abused as children. This led him to complete a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry and to focus his research on the psychological, biological, and social effects of child abuse. He co-founded the 35+ year, longitudinal Female Growth and Development Study (FGDS) (still ongoing) to assess the consequences of childhood sexual abuse on female development.

 In his new book, Old Before Their Time (Routledge, December 2025), Dr. Putnam gathers FGDS findings for the first time in a narrative accessible to survivors, parents, therapists, medical practitioners, first responders, community leaders, and policymakers.